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| Monday Aug 21, 2023 | |
| The weather pattern seen over the past few years has changed the way we look at things as events like Storm Uri were known to hit the Midwest or Northwest in the middle of February, not the South Central (specifically Texas). Hurricane season runs from early summer to late fall and typically has a focus on the Atlantic Ocean and the Gulf of Mexico. Many of us remember what Hurricane Katrina did to the Gulf Coast as the massive push of water broke several levees and almost destroyed New Orleans. Figure 1 | Storm Uri and Hurricane Katrina This summer has delivered fires across Canada where the flames are destroying acres of government land and the smoke filled air is circulating around the world with a jet stream moving N to S delivering bad air quality from the Northeast to ... » read more | |
| Friday Aug 18, 2023 | |
| Here at Energy GPS, we have been tracking the Washington State Cap-and-Invest Program since its inception. As part of such effort, we’ve developed a fundamentals based forecast for emissions from each major carbon emitting sector in the State of Washington. Our forecast has consistently shown that emissions in the State of Washington will exceed the 2023 program cap. This is why we were not surprised with the most recent auction results from the first Allowance Price Containment Reserve (APCR) auction. The results from Ecology showed that all 1,054,000 APCR allowances (equally split between Tier 1 at $51.90/allowance, and Tier 2 at $66.86/allowance) were sold. This was an expected result, based on our emissions forecast released in early August ... » read more | |
| Thursday Aug 17, 2023 | |
| Back to the Future was an iconic science fiction movie where Micheal J Fox played Marty McFly, a 17-year old high school student, that was sent 30 years into the past in a time-traveling DeLorean invented by his close friend Doc Brown. This sort of time capsule allowed Marty to get a glimpse of his parents as teenagers, see things unfold and eventually return to the world he once left in 1985 to see how life evolved over the 30 years as his father was a successful author, his mother was happy and his siblings successful. In our latest Newsletter Special Report, “Backing into ERCOT’s Future” we look to the future of ERCOT as current events are showing the stress currently in play for the region’s power grid. Figure 1 | ERCOT Back to the ... » read more | |
| Wednesday Aug 16, 2023 | |
| If you’re subscribed to receive our CAISO Daily Battery Dashboard via the EnergyGPS Platinum Plus Package, the table below probably looks familiar. It displays arbitrage values for four-hour CAISO batteries operating in the real-time market of SP15 and NP15. It uses our TB4 model which assumes a battery can discharge in the four highest priced hours of the day and charge during the four lowest priced hours of the day with some efficiency loss. In practice, this is not possible as it would require a perfectly omniscient battery operator. So you might be wondering, how much of this arbitrage are batteries able to capture? To help answer that question, we’ve made some updates to our daily dashboard. Figure 1 | TBNth Arbitrage Values The figure below was featured in ... » read more | |
| Tuesday Aug 15, 2023 | |
| The day of reckoning will be in play across CAISO and ERCOT later today as both regions are looking at extensive heat and little wind generation to assist in the overall balancing act, especially during the evening ramp period when the solar output shifts lower as the sun sets and the net load climbs. The market conditions within both markets have been discussed extensively over the past couple of weeks within the EnergyGPS North American Power and Natural Gas Enterprise Product Offering. Figure 1 | CAISO Peak Power Demand – Actual and Forecast The daily conversations within such a product detail the regional supply/demand picture associated to both power and natural gas. Take for example, at the end of July 2023, Southern California’s gas entity had pipe issues ... » read more | |
| Monday Aug 14, 2023 | |
| The summer is nearly half over as the midpoint of the third quarter is upon us. For those living in the South Central region, specifically Texas, the past six weeks have been one for ages as a heat dome weather pattern has been locked in across the region. The result is simple, daytime highs regularly tops the triple digit level with high humidity of the Gulf of Mexico that leads to some of the highest ERCOT power demand levels seen by the system operators. Figure 1 | ERCOT Net Load Daily Profile – Year on Year Comparison Figure 1 displays the rolling 7-Day net load average for the past three years in the top figure while the lower left takes on the profile for the past seven days and an equivalent forecasted period. The lower right graph displays the hourly ... » read more | |
| Friday Aug 11, 2023 | |
| Summertime: Baseball and Electricity Summer 2023 has been a real scorcher in places and brought with it record-setting heat, particularly in the South and West, along with record-setting performance from many renewables throughout the US. But summer also makes me think of our national pastime: baseball. I prefer the small-ball version of baseball: singles, stolen bases, bunts, and hit-and-run type play. It’s more exciting than waiting for a base-clearing homerun. The electric grid is increasingly playing its version of “small ball” in the form of distributed, smaller-scale, and intermittent resources such as renewables, supplemented with batteries and gas peaker facilities. Meanwhile, our long-ball analogue, large baseload power ... » read more | |
| Thursday Aug 10, 2023 | |
| This summer has seen some key changes to real-time prices in ISOs across the country that have impacted the revenue renewables have received compared to previous years. In our latest Newsletter Renewable Monthly report, “July 2023 – Comparing Price Profiles”, we dig into these renewable capture ratios by examining the changes in monthly price profiles, as well as the drivers behind the changes. Below is an excerpt from the report, touching on both CAISO and ERCOT’s price changes. To start off with in CAISO, renewables performed roughly on par with June production, with the July solar profile peaking at 14.9 GW again while average wind generation shifted down 400 MW to 3 GW for the month. The events resulted in a July price profile at SP15 that ... » read more | |
| Wednesday Aug 9, 2023 | |
| Just last month, we discussed the warmest June on record for global temperatures, but July has turned up the heat even more. This July was the hottest on record with temperatures across the globe shattering previously set highs. In the US, the Desert Southwest and Texas sat under a heat dome for much of the month. Several cities broke records for most consecutive days over 100 degrees (or over 110 degrees!), including Phoenix and El Paso. The heat strained the electrical grids as demand stretched with the need for air conditioning to create a livable environment. In our July monthly, titled ‘Turning Up the Heat in July’, we examined the impacts of a sweltering July on the affected grids across the country, as well as neighboring regions that offered support. Read on for a ... » read more | |
| Tuesday Aug 8, 2023 | |
| ERCOT continues its summer heat wave with temperatures across the state topping the century mark for the day-time highs. Wind generation numbers are impressive all things considered, that is until it does not show up in the real-time market and the ERCOT system operators are left scrambling for megawatts knowing that the sun is eventually going to set, and the power demand is still present. Figure 1 | ERCOT Wind/Solar 12x24 Monthly Generation Profiles The graph above illustrates the renewable landscape across ERCOT for the first seven days of August 2023 and the months/years that proceed it. The shapes on display are associated to the hourly average output by month for wind and solar units across the Lone Star state with each color representing the past three years. The ... » read more | |